


every night, i'll dream of you

by writedeku



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Confessions, Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Mild Angst, Pining Oikawa Tooru
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 05:54:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13140450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writedeku/pseuds/writedeku
Summary: A rustle of static again. “Did you have a bad dream?”“Did I?” Oikawa mumbles and his eyes slide away, as though Iwaizumi was in front of him and he was afraid of making eye contact.There’s silence on the other end. “That bad?” Iwaizumi asks after a few seconds of pause, then there’s more rustling as he appears to be getting out of bed. “Stay awake, Oikawa.”(Oikawa starts to suffer from chronic nightmares. Iwaizumi is there to help.)





	every night, i'll dream of you

**Author's Note:**

> hello! this was written for Ri, for the haikyuu secret santa exchange! you asked for angst/fluff and hurt/comfort, so i delivered hehe. i hope you like it and merry christmas!

Oikawa’s hands shake as he dials a number he’s long since committed to memory — his fingers instinctively know where to tap, even though his mind is running at a hundred miles per hour and the world is spinning away from him. He tries to take a grounding breath and fails.

Placing the phone on speaker, he listens to the monotone dial fill his dark, cold room. The glow in the dark stars he has pasted onto his ceiling, for once, offer no comfort. 

Iwaizumi picks up on the third ring, which is so surprising Oikawa forgets for a moment why he called. 

“Oikawa?” Iwaizumi’s voice is sleep-hoarse and gruff; it sends chills down Oikawa’s spine and makes him draw in a deep breath. "Is something wrong?”

“You’re okay, right?” Oikawa whispers, but no real sound comes out, so he tries again. “Iwa-chan, you’re not in pain?”

Oikawa knows Iwaizumi well enough to picture his reaction in perfect detail. Iwaizumi would be lying on his right side, because his socket is against the right wall and he keeps his phone plugged in through the night. Above him is a series of four windows in a line, a ledge just below it where he keeps his trophies, figurines, and other miscellaneous objects, like a plant Oikawa got him a few months ago that he hasn’t managed to kill. The shadows from these objects will look strange against his body, because while there are curtains on the windows, they are never closed. Oikawa used to be afraid of them when he was young —used to swear he saw faces in the window, that the shadows rippled across his body, demonic and threatening. 

But Iwaizumi wakes up before the sun rises and he claims he likes the night light in his room. The silvery, orange glow from the streetlights and the moon has always made his room a very ethereal place to be, once you looked past the murky grey brown of the shadows, and the occasional sound of laughter from a group of passerby. In fact, Oikawa used to like to say that the most possible place for an alien abduction would be Iwaizumi’s room at witching-hour, and the games they used to play in the light darkness of the room still made him smile. 

Right now, Iwaizumi would be doing the forehead crinkle thing he always does when he is confused. His eyes would still be closed. 

“In pain?” Iwaizumi asks, and now he sounds concerned. There’s a rustle in the background, a click — he’s sitting up and pulling out his phone cable. Now he’d be in a tank top, because he always sleeps in a tank top, his green covers pooling around his legs. “Oikawa, I’m fine.”

“I know,” Oikawa lies back in his bed and stares at his grey ceiling. His left hand tightens on a stuffed dog Iwaizumi had gotten for him ages ago, when they were small and stuffed animals were still the _it_ toy to give. “I just…had to make sure.”

A rustle of static again. “Did you have a bad dream?”

“Did I?” Oikawa mumbles and his eyes slide away, as though Iwaizumi was in front of him and he was afraid of making eye contact. 

There’s silence on the other end. “That bad?” Iwaizumi asks after a few seconds of pause, then there’s more rustling as he appears to be getting out of bed. “Stay awake, Oikawa.” 

Oikawa blinks, opens his mouth to say something, but then the line disconnects and he is left with the loud _doot doot_ of the dial tone ringing through his room. _Stay awake?_ He wonders. _It’s not going to be hard._

The thing is, it’s not like this particular nightmare is anything new. In fact said nightmare has been repeating itself in variations over the course of the past few weeks, and it’s getting to the point where Oikawa will rephrase his top three descriptors from _captain, popular_ and _handsome_ to _captain, popular_ and _sleep deprived._

He’s sure his teammates and classmates have noticed his lack of lustre lately. He doesn’t stick around for the girls that come to watch practice, he no longer tells the third years about conspiracy theories during lunch — in fact he eats and takes a nap. A _nap._

He can’t remember the last cryptid he stopped at. Was it the Kappa? He never really thought he’d get into the whole cryptid business, but it’d happened one day during class — someone had asked what the Ningen were, and Oikawa, dutiful as always, had researched it — and promptly fallen into the trap that was conspiracy theories. 

It would be easier to deal with if his nightmares were about a Kappa or a giant snake coming to eat him, but they’re not. They’re frighteningly personal, and as he remembers them his blood runs cold and he draws his legs up to his chest. 

He’d almost fallen asleep like that, not out of any personal wish of his own, when his phone rings and wakes him up. 

_Ace ace space mace is calling._

Okay, so that didn’t make sense, but Oikawa picks up anyway. 

“Open the door,” Iwaizumi demands immediately, and Oikawa nearly jumps a foot in the air, might’ve actually done it if he wasn’t seated. 

“What?”

“I said open the damn door,” Iwaizumi’s voice communicates the extent of the roll of his eyes and Oikawa finds himself instinctively rolling out of bed, forging through the curtain of darkness, and stepping out into the living room. Even the normally unthreatening sofa area and dining table look ominous in the wake of his dream and the nighttime stillness — being here when it was almost taboo to be seemed _wrong_ and like he was infringing upon something sacred, so he hurries to the door and swings it wide open without really thinking. 

On his front porch, in a coat and pyjama bottoms, stands a smiling Iwaizumi. His eyes are soft, his teeth bright in the shadows. “Yo, Oikawa,” he says, and Oikawa’s mouth drops open, his eyes fill with tears, and he whispers — conscious of some sort of time rule he seems to be breaking — 

“Iwa-chan!” 

“You’re so sappy,” Iwaizumi rubs the back of his head, but he slips off his shoes and steps into the house, stage-whispering a “sorry for the intrusion” that Oikawa laughs at. 

He feels almost giddy, and a bit like he’s still dreaming — can’t believe Iwaizumi is here at three in the morning because Oikawa had called him when he’d been stabbed in the heart by a nightmare. Maybe Oikawa should’ve called him sooner, all those weeks ago when the nightmares had first started and Oikawa was hearing Iwaizumi’s pained shout on loop on repeat like a broken recorder. 

Oikawa leads him to his room. On the way, he grabs the spare pillow and blanket from the guest bedroom and they arrange them on Oikawa’s bed like how they used to when they were kids. It’s a good thing now that Oikawa’s bed is pressed up against the wall, because he braces himself against it and leaves enough room for Iwaizumi to lie down next to him. 

He’s really gotten big, hasn't he? He used to be small, smaller than Oikawa even. He was scrawny and all loose, gangly, disproportionate limbs that were always some form of scraped or bruised. Oikawa had been taller and broader right through elementary — or at least, until they’d found volleyball and Iwaizumi had taken to spiking like a fish to water and _shot up._

He smells really nice too — like his house and his bed, which always smelt like Jasmine tea and another…musky sort of scent that’s entirely Iwaizumi and so indescribable. Oikawa wants to inch closer, wants to take his scent by the neck, to press his lips to the tanned skin and — he squeezes his eyes shut and lets loose a shaky breath.

Iwaizumi is here because he’s _kind_ and his _best friend_ and Oikawa could never do that, never do that to the both of them.

Iwaizumi grins at him — it curls across his face and brightens his eyes. “You okay there?” he asks, and when Oikawa blinks his eyes open morosely and looks at him sadly. “How long have you been having those nightmares?”

“Ages,” Oikawa laughs and presses the heel of his palms to his eyes. “A few weeks in a row now.”

“Is that why you’ve been so tired lately?” Iwaizumi is gentle. It’s hardly known, for when he plays volleyball he seems to adopt a more aggressive approach, but Iwaizumi is gentle at heart and he _cares,_ cares so much Oikawa sometimes convinces himself that in Iwaizumi’s light he _has_ to be bad. If Iwaizumi, lying here now, was a knight in shining armour, Oikawa must’ve been the dragon keeping the damsel. 

“I guess,” Oikawa twiddles his thumbs and has no idea where to look. Iwaizumi is just _there_ , his entire body on display for him — once again he wants to roll over and tangle their legs together, but Oikawa is conditioned by a world that he knows nothing of and lies in ruins, and so he cannot. “It’s…”

“What’s it about?” Iwaizumi rolls onto his back and looks up at the stars. His face creases into a sort of smile. “If you wanna talk about it, that is.”

Oikawa blinks at him. His side profile is just as good as his front. It’s unfair. 

“It’s about you,” he says, then realises how that sounds and wishes he could suck back in the words. 

Iwaizumi blinks. “What about me?”

Now that’s it’s been said, Oikawa seems to have no choice but to follow through, so he says, “I’m usually running toward you — you’re screaming something awful, like you’re in pain,” he curls in on himself. “But I can never reach you. I’m always blocked by someone, or something, and when I finally make it past them I —," he sucks in a deep breath. “I fall off the dream and into nothingness and the whole time you are screaming and screaming. And it’s just— awful,” he finishes lamely. 

There’s silence after his words, like it was some sort of a sacred confession. “I…” Iwaizumi starts, his expression hard to make out in the darkness. “I see.” 

“I know,” Oikawa rolls over to face the wall. “It’s stupid.”

“No, no,” Iwaizumi coughs. “I just didn’t expect that.” 

“What did you expect?” Oikawa asks scathingly, his words a lash in the night. He’s overreacting, he knows he is, but his feelings are piling up one on another and he’s tired, he’s so tired he wants to be done with everything and anything. “It’d just be some sort of volleyball dream? Guess what — I fucki—‘

A hand lands on his shoulder, then pulls him, and his body curves into Iwaizumi’s solid one. Oikawa’s eyes fly wide open and he suddenly realises he can barely breathe. Iwaizumi is strong and sturdy behind him, his body much like his unwavering spirit and personality. 

Oikawa wants to cry. “Stop it,” he mumbles, and once those words are out it’s like he’s broken a dam and they all come pouring out. “Stop it!” His voice cracks on the last syllable and pushes his face into his hands, his tone shaky. 

“Oikawa?” Iwaizumi asks. His warm breath is too close to Oikawa’s nape, and suddenly it makes him _mad._

He wants this game to stop. Wasn’t sure when it even became a game, so he turns around, his eyes narrowing in anger and — stops short when he realises he would only have to lean forward a little bit for their lips to brush. 

“Oikawa?” Iwaizumi’s words wash over him. His eyes are dark, bright, alive. Oikawa’s sure his face is red, is grateful for the gloom that hides his expressions. His eyes, however, flit downward to the gentle slope of Iwaizumi’s lips — they’re slightly chapped, but they look soft. They'd be warm, too. Iwaizumi is always warm, even in this late September. 

How many times has he fantasised about this, tortured himself with this, with the idea of pressing kisses down the slope of Iwaizumi’s jaw and the hollow of his neck and nipping along his collarbones? How many minutes has he wasted in class, watching the morning sun hit his jawline and wondering what it would be like to be held by him?

“You are in charge of your own head,” Iwaizumi continues on blithely, unaware of Oikawa’s inner turmoil. “Your dreams probably reflect something you feel…” here even he pauses. “Strongly about. Are you worried about something?”

That’s right. _You are in charge of your own head._ Oikawa has never backed down from a chance. He’s never let a ball fly over his head without going after it. He’s never let one point hit the ground without a fight. 

But something like this, something so dangerous — is it a fight Oikawa wants to stake himself in? 

“Tooru,” ah, even the way Iwaizumi says his name makes it sound like something worth protecting. He forms the name in his mouth like it’s made of stained glass — fragile and beautiful — and Oikawa realises he’s here, now, at three in the morning on a school night, not just because he's _kind,_ and the revelation kind of blows him away. 

“Oh my god,” Oikawa breathes, and he must look kind of feverish, because Iwaizumi gets concerned again. 

“What?” he asks, but if there was more to that sentence it does not get said, because Oikawa leans forward and hesitantly touches his lips to his, like it’s more of a question than a statement. 

Iwaizumi stiffens beneath him and then relaxes all too soon, like this is an everyday occurrence and that they’ve been lovers for millennia. He says lightly against Oikawa’s lips, “okay,” and then moves his head forward with the intent that Oikawa had been lacking. His eyes flutter shut. 

Ah, so this is what it’s like to kiss someone. It’s not as _magical_ or _wow_ as the manga he’s read has lead him to believe, but it’s something else altogether. It’s very warm. Perhaps it’s the taboo of the situation — kissing his best friend in his bed at three thirty in the morning — the intimacy, and the value he’s attached to this, but there’s a stirring in his gut and a tingling in his fingers, and it makes him want something more. He presses closer, one hand curling around Iwaizumi’s tank, swinging his legs up to do what he’s wanted to since Iwaizumi had come here — tangle their legs together. 

Iwaizumi pulls back after a while, what could be a flush on his face. There’s a strand of saliva connecting their lips, Oikawa realises dazedly. _Holy shit._ “What was that for?” he asks, but he doesn’t sound angry or overly curious. 

“I…” Oikawa turns red. “I just did that?”

“You did,” Iwaizumi laughs and rolls over onto his elbows, bracketing Oikawa in with his arms. This time Oikawa knows for sure he cannot make eye contact, because if he does, he might explode. “I don't mind.”

“I do!” Oikawa squeaks and covers his face. “I was so sure you’d hate me, Iwa-chan.” 

“I’m offended,” Iwaizumi laughs. “Haven’t we been friends for too long for you to doubt me?”

“I didn’t know you’d want to _kiss_ me!” 

“Well you could’ve asked?”

“How could I have asked?” Oikawa shoves his chest and finds that in spite of everything, there’s a smile on his face. “God — why _you_?”

Iwaizumi presses a kiss to his forehead and rolls away. “Because I’m the only one who pays attention when you talk about cryptids.”’

Oikawa thinks about this. “That could’ve been it.” 

“I know,” Iwaizumi leans back on his stuffed dog and smiles loosely. “You know when you leaned over in the middle of chemistry and drew a little green alien on my paper? When we were fifteen?”

Oikawa struggles to recall. He does it a lot. “The one that said _fight on?”_

“Yeah,” Iwaizumi closes his eyes and relaxes his shoulders. “I was struggling and you just — I realised I had a crush on you then. That was ages ago.”

“That was _two_ years ago.”

“Ages to have a crush on someone, _shitty_ kawa,” Iwaizumi rolls his eyes. 

“I had a crush on you since I was _five,”_ Oikawa sticks out his tongue and laughs a little breathlessly. _Is this happening? Is this real?_ He’s running so high on emotions he can barely think. 

Iwaizumi crosses his arms and huffs. “This isn’t a competition,” he says, then smugly adds on, “but I had a crush on you when I was four.”

“We didn’t know each other when we were four,” Oikawa retorts indignantly. 

“I knew you in my heart,” Iwaizumi presses his hand to Oikawa’s chest. The both of them laugh and quickly shush each other when they remember where they are.

They lapse into a silence that stretches mountains and oceans, before Iwaizumi nudges his shoulder gently. “Go to sleep,” he says. “I’ll be here when you wake.”

Oikawa blinks at him. “Promise?” he asks, because he’s still so lost. 

“Dumbass,” Iwaizumi rolls his eyes, turns around, and closes his eyes in a swift motion. “Goodnight, Oikawa.”

“Tooru,” Oikawa says softly, but it’s too soft, and Iwaizumi doesn't hear him. Content just to stay in the moment, he braces his back against the wall once more, lets one hand rest near Iwaizumi’s fingers — just brushing them — and lets himself be lulled by Iwaizumi’s breathing into sleep. 

He does not dream that night, and when he wakes up it’s not to his alarm, it’s to Iwaizumi brushing his hair out of his face and saying, “morning, sleepyhead. I’m exhausted thanks to you.”

“Sorry, Iwa-chan,” Oikawa yawns and rubs sleep out of his eyes. “Wouldn’t you say it was worth it, though?”

A small smile cracks Iwaizumi’s face. In the light of the morning, the atmosphere is different from last night, and Oikawa is almost uncharacteristically shy. It makes Iwaizumi smile. 

“I guess,” Iwaizumi yawns and stretches too. “Can I eat breakfast here?”

“You know my mother loves you,” Oikawa swings his feet out of bed.

“I know you do.”

Oikawa gapes at him for a full five seconds and turns a vibrant shade of red, much to Iwaizumi’s satisfaction. 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading! please leave a comment or a kudos if you liked it :D


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